NO FIWOTTS ALLOWED!

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Not that there was any doubt

But Darwyn Cooke's issue of Solo is beautiful, amazing, lovely, and eleven other kinds of great. If you don't have it yet, stop reading this and go get it now.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Desire

I want this so bad that it hurts my mitochondria.

dear sweet Lord

I want it painted on something that I can use for transportation.

Wow.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Let me tell you about Ed Cunard

I just want a little editorial balance here. Without going into all the gory details, let's just say that Ed Cunard presents one face to the public, a face that tells people what they want to hear. Then, in private, he devises new schemes to agitate for indoctrination programs in local schools. We must view the realms of corporatism and paternalism not as two opposing poles, but as two continua. To do anything else, and I do mean anything else, is a complete waste of time.

Here's an idea: Instead of giving Ed the ability to paralyze any serious or firm decision and thereby become responsible for the weak and half-hearted execution of even the most necessary measures, why don't we anneal discourse with honesty, clear thinking, and a sense of moral good? If we do, we'll then be able to contribute to the intellectual and spiritual health of the body politic. On balance, I would like nothing more than to convince wild meatheads to stop supporting Ed and tolerating his mottos. Still, Ed has found a way to avoid compliance with government regulations, circumvent any further litigation, and make empty promises -- all by trumping up a phony emergency.

Despite total incompetence, he is often afflicted with an amazing conceit, which causes him to intensify or perpetuate jingoism. Moving on, his notions must not go unchallenged. Ed will almost certainly tiptoe around that glaringly evident fact, because if he didn't, you might come to realize that his forces have demonstrated brutally, horribly, and with great terror how they will pilfer the national treasure. In fact, I have said that to Ed on many occasions, and I will keep on saying it until he stops trying to invent a new moral system that legitimizes his desire to rob us of our lives, our health, our honor, and our belongings.

He is differentiated from your average beer-guzzling nitwits by virtue of the fact that he wants to perpetuate myths that glorify Maoism. Note that someone has been giving Ed's brain a very thorough washing, and now Ed is trying to do the same to us. I do not wish to evaluate interdenominationalism here, though I maintain that only by striving to transform our culture of war and violence into a culture of peace and nonviolence can I prevent the production of a new crop of what I call putrid, clueless survivalists. Let's remember that. It's a well-known fact that Ed's lethargic, counter-productive fantasy fits neatly into his peremptory model of society. It's an equally well-known fact that Ed has done inestimable damage to everything around him. When logic puts these two facts together, the necessary result is an understanding that I want to focus on the major economic, social, and political forces that provide the setting for the expression of a Pecksniffian agenda. That may seem simple enough, but Ed truly believes that it's okay to twist the truth. It is just such silly, villainous megalomania, ignorant egoism, and intellectual aberrancy that stirs Ed to rewrite and reword much of humanity's formative works to favor quislingism.

While he has a right to his opinion, he maintains that either his vices are the only true virtues or that everyone and everything discriminates against him -- including the writing on the bathroom stalls. Ed denies any other possibility. Since this is one of those "don't say I didn't warn you" letters, I want also to note that if he doesn't like it here, then perhaps he should go elsewhere. Here's a specific example of the way in which the falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart: He wants to threaten the common good. Let me move now from the abstract to the concrete. That is, let me give you a (mercifully) few examples of Ed's outrageous ineptitude. For starters, it's our responsibility to embark on a new path towards change. That's the first step in trying to reach the broadest possible audience with the message that some deep void within Ed makes it necessary for him to convince impressionable young people that the few of us who complain regularly about his plans for the future are simply spoiling the party, and it's the only way to expose some of his saturnine deeds. All in all, I realize that this letter has seemed incredibly bleak. However, expecting the worst from Ed Cunard means we will never be disappointed. If we're wrong and he does not try to crush people to the earth and then claim the right to trample on them forever because they are prostrate, we'll be relieved. If we're right and he does, we'll be prepared.

Awesomeness Quotient

On the bus today I came up with a new thing that is VERY IMPORTANT. It is called the Awesomeness Quotient, or A.Q. for short. The awesomeness quotient is the amount of awesome things in a given comic book (a) divided by the number of pages (p), which is to say A.Q. = a/p. Now I have a stack of comic books that were released last week and I'm going to show you the A.Q. of each.

Hellboy: 35/32 = 1.09375. That's a damned respectable A.Q. Let's move on.

Spider-man: House of M: 17/32 = 0.53125. Yikes. I kind of enjoyed this book, but it's clearly not that awesome.

House of M itself: 6/32 = 0.1875. Egad! That comic is totally not awesome.

New Avengers: 2/32 = 0.0625. One of the lowest possible A.Q.'s. It would be hard to be less awesome than this book.

Shaolin Cowboy: 43/32 = 1.4375. HOLY CRAP! That is a really awesome comic.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: 18/32 = 0.5625. That's a pretty healthy awesomeness. I imagine it's helped by Carey's decision to actually have things happen in the book. And the new Mad Thinker is sufficiently creepy to be awesome.

Captain America: 20/32 = 0.625. Considering how sad and bittersweet this comic is, that's pretty amazing. Good job to Brubaker and Leon.

Fantastic Four: Foes: 15/32 = 0.4625. Not Kirkman's best, but it's still better than some of the other stuff.

Livewires: 33/32 = 1.03125 The only big-two book to break the 1 barrier so far.

Girls: 18/32 = 0.5625. Interesting, the same A.Q. as UFF. However, this is a book that doesn't hinge on awesomeness, it hinges on story and art. Nonetheless, the Lunas keep the A.Q. at a decent level. Good on ya.

The Flaming Carrot: 38/32 = 1.1875. Truly awesome.

So let's take a look . . .in the 0.0 to 0.3 "Not Awesome" Range we have House of M and New Avengers. It would appear that Bendis doesn't do "awesome" well. In the 0.3 to 0.5 "still not very awesome" range there's Fantastic Four: Foes. From 0.5 to 0.8 we have "Awesome," which includes Girls, Spider-man House of M, Ultimate Fantastic Four and Captain America. We don't have anything in the 0.8 to 1.0 "Really Awesome," but in the 1.0 to 1.2 "Extreme Awesome" bunch, there's Hellboy, Flaming Carrot, and Livewires. Then we have Shaolin Cowboy, which breaks the barries and becomes "UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME."

I hope this formula and rating system helps you all find awesome comics. I probably liked a few comics more than Shaolin Cowboy, so remember Awesomenocity isn't the only way to judge a comic. BUT IT IS A WAY THAT IS GOOD.